The belligerent teenage daughter has become a fixture on contemporary cable TV shows.

While no one will likely top cranky brat Dana Brody (Morgan Saylor) on “Homeland” — whose endless complaining made viewers wish she would join the jihad along with father Nicholas (Damien Lewis) — Whitney Soloway (Julia Goldani Telles) on “The Affair” is a close second.

The eldest of four children whose parents divorce was hostile (to say the least), Whitney says unimaginably rude things to everyone — and gets away with it.

Obviously, Telles, a 20-year-old Columbia University coed, wouldn’t talk to her own parents (both professors at Princeton) like this, right?

“Never in 30 million years,” says Telles. “Can you imagine? My parents would never let me. People get confused between me and the character. Somebody yelled at me on the street the other day. It was very interesting and a little annoying.”

In other words, in making you hate witchy Whitney, she’s doing her job. Telles says hellcats have been her stock in trade since she played Sasha Torres on the ABC Family series “Bunheads.”

“They go based on what you’ve already done,” she says. “But I’m also really attracted to those parts. Playing troublemakers is really fun for me.”

“Affair” co-creator Sarah Treem says Whitney’s role was enlarged when she and her cohorts saw Telles on camera. “I don’t think we had any idea how pivotal her character was going to become until we started working with Julia,” she says. “She was so damn good in the pilot it was obvious she could handle a lot. Certain actors just command the camera.”

Working on “The Affair” is challenging for any actor, as one is often asked to play the same scene from two different vantage points. But one of Telles’ most daunting moments comes when she sits down to watch the show with her parents.

“I watched the show with them twice. It’s so awkward,” she says. “The sex scenes. You have to watch it alone. My mom is the kind of TV watcher who predicts what’s going to happen out loud. Before [the audience learned] Whitney was pregnant, she’d say, ‘You’re pregnant.’”

Telles went into acting after a hip injury forced her to abandon her hopes of becoming a dancer. Fluent in Spanish and Portuguese, she is a sophomore at Columbia, studying sociology. “I want to study gender and sexuality. I’m also really interested in race,” she says. “Columbia has a lot of core requirements, though. Even if takes 10 years I’m going to finish.”

And it may take “The Affair” that long to reveal who killed Scotty Lockhart (Colin Donnell), the Montauk ne’er-do-well who fathered Whitney’s aborted baby. Telles promises that, by the end of the season (Dec. 20), we will find out the name of his killer. “Somebody’s going to be found guilty” is all she’ll say.

@StephenKing thank you for watching the show! "Headstrong" is a good word for Whitney. I'm a big fan of yours!

If it’s not Noah (Dominic West), Whitney’s depraved dad, no matter. He’s already been found guilty by viewers for ogling his own daughter at a Hamptons’ orgy where she was — so what else is new? — rebelliously making out with another girl. Will our faith in him ever be restored?

“I don’t know if I call it redemption, but you will empathize more with him at the end of the season,” she says.